CRIBIORE, RAFFAELLA, The Happy Farmer: A Student Composition from Roman Egypt , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:3 (1992:Fall) p.247 The Happy Farmer: A Student Composition from Roman Egypt Raffaella Cribiore THANKS TO ROBERT KASTER'S recent study of grammarians in late antiquity,l we now have a better understanding of how these "guardians of language" lived, of their place in society, their social relations, and their economic circumstan­ ces. Despite his limited mobility, the grammarian emerges as a formidable custos of language and tradition, entrusted with providing a firm base of continuity in a changing world. Language, its conventions, and the texts of the traditional poets were endlessly scrutinized to illustrate and confirm the gram­ marian's rules. Because the profession was bound by tradition and convention, a grammarian's classroom would not have differed much from one part of the empire to another. Yet little in the literary sources actually tells what went on in his classes. For this we must turn to the surviving school exercises. These texts have in the past received only marginal attention. As soon as a literary passage was identified as a student's school­ room exercise, its value as a witness for a given text was held suspect because of its provenance. When the exercise brought to light a student's effort at original composition, it was treated with even greater disregard. But the composition on the tablet presented here can claim at least the merit of shedding some light on ancient educational practices. These ten lines, concerning the life of a hardworking but happy farmer, show something of the percolation of ideas and motifs from a higher level of education to the grammarian's classroom; and the cross-shaped signs drawn at the end of each line offer an opportuni ty for examining the different methods of writing verse in the schools. I R. A. Kaster, Guardians of Language. The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley 1988). 247 CRIBIORE, RAFFAELLA, The Happy Farmer: A Student Composition from Roman Egypt , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:3 (1992:Fall) p.247 248 A STUDENT COMPOSITION FROM ROMAN EGYPT I The tablet (PLATE 1),2 found in the ruins of Athribis in the Delta in 1853, was published initially in 1865 by G. Parthey,3 who considered it a book cover with an invocation to St George. In 1890 a new text appeared in Wilcken's list of manuscripts of the Prussian Royal Library,4 and in 1901 he re-edited the tablet, explicitly rejecting Parthey's identification. 5 Wilcken confessed that he did not understand the tablet completely, but he regarded it as a school exercise, written in dreadful poetic language, on the trials of a farmer's life. "Vielleicht," Wilcken concluded, "regt meine noch mangelhafte Lesung dieses strafbaren Schiilergedichtes einen Anderen zur genaueren Edition und Interpretation an." In 1913 H. Leclercq republished the text. 6 Without explicitly saying so, he reprinted Wilcken's first text of 1890 with only one change, and that a manifestly incorrect reading-apyol for aypOl at the end of line 5-in effect adding to the student's other mistakes. The tablet has two holes close to the edge of one of the long sides, in which some thread was found. It was probably part of a notebook. One side is blank, the other carries ten lines of writing, traced with a thick pen, running parallel to the longer dimension. In several places the text is now considerably faded, but Parthey himself lamented the poor condition of the surface. The text is marred by several stains, some of them extensive. It is difficult to say if some words were cancelled or merely smudged. Both Wilcken and Leclercq speak of a composition with teacher's corrections, but the only sign of correction is an expunging dot on top of the p of fP1tlA.£~{J) at the end of line 2, which could have been added by the student. Two acute ac­ cents also appear: one, at the wrong place,7 in line 3 and another in line 4. Wilcken tentatively dated the hand to the fourth 2 Ms. graec. quo 36 in the catalogue of the Staatsbibliothek Preugischer Kulturbesitz (Pack 2 1883); cf E. G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World2 (London 1987) Suppl. pI. IIE. 3 G. Parthey, AbhBer11865, 139f. • W. Studemund and L. Cohn, Verzeichnis der griechischen Handschriften der koniglichen Bibliothek zu Berlin I (Berlin 1890) 188 no. 339. 5 See Archiv 1 (1901) 428f. 6 BAncLit 3 (1913) 209-12. 7 The mark may indicate the quantity of the diphthong, but the sign used seems more appropriate for an accent. CRIBIORE, RAFFAELLA, The Happy Farmer: A Student Composition from Roman Egypt , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:3 (1992:Fall) p.247 RAFFAELLA CRIBIORE 249 century. It is certainly not the hand of a beginner: given its mixture of words written with letters separated and words written cursively and hastily, the writing resembles the school tablets of older students. 8 The form of some letters (e.g. the v­ shaped upsilon and alpha with the loop open at the top) seems to point to a date close to the fifth century.9 The poor condition of the tablet renders autopsy no more fruitful than examination of a photograph,lO but it is possible to improve the text considerably, despite the student's frequent phonetic spelling, which at times complicates the work of understanding, restoration, and interpretation. Below is an un­ corrected transcription of the scribe's text, with accents, breathings, spaces between words, and apparatus, followed by a normalized text and literal translation. 11 Mfya~ y£wpyo~ 'trov av8paya8t[[wv't]]rov 6 Ka'taAwyo~ + 8o't£ 1l0t AfytV Kat (J'ttXOtO't Il£U' EP1ttAf~W + 1tall1tWpo~ y£wpyo~ Kliv au'tOupyo~ O'1ttpt Yfav + 4 yAuKatprov Kalla'twv 't£p1t6J.l£vo~ £v aypotKtat~ + Suy0 8allaso ~oa Kat £u8£'to apw'tllptV + VUK'tl J.l£AfVn Xop'tacrllaO'tv £1ttll£AOUIl£vO~ + EV allaO't wO'au'tw~ 'tllv aO'KOtO'tv 1tOtoull£vo~ + 8 au'ta'PKll y£wpyo~ £up'lv 1111 8tvoll£vo~ + ... 'tTjpw was simply adopted by Leclerq, who tried in vain to explain it. The reading 8u~aso, however, is quite certain. The verb was frequently used in relation to animals, especially by Homer, who seems to have been a source of special in­ spiration for the author of this composition. 8u~aso and Eu8E'tO represent two present participles that were written with an exchange in vowel quantity and omission of final v, both phenomena being quite frequent in the Roman and Byzantine periods (Gignac 111-14, 325). The accusative ~ou (for ~ouv) is Ionic, poetic, and exceedingly rare. ap(O'tTjpl.V stands for ap0nlPl.Ov. WiIcken explained the unknown words as the equivalent of a po'tTj 0" 1.0 V , an adjective meaning 'for ploughing'. The whole expression would correspond to ~ouv apo'tTjpu (used e.g. by Hes. Op. 405). 7 At the beginning of the line WiIcken read tv a.~uo"l. and explained the form as a Doric dative of ~~up. Certainly this is an unexpected form here, but the contrast with vU)('t{ of the preceding line is attrac­ tive. Another possible reading might be ap~uO"l.. The word aplla, in addition to having a certain heroic ring, is used in documentary papyri also in connection with agriculture (e.g. SB XVI 12381 col. ii 14). 8 WiIcken read au:?? as the first word and considered the following YEropyoS a mistake for the accusative plural YEropyoUS. The farmer was unable to find fellow workers. But as in line 1, there is a risk of ac­ cusing a student of committing mistakes of which he was not guilty. First of all, a longer word is needed at the beginning, since the space before YECOPYOS is quite extensive. The word au'taplCllS gives a much CRIBIO RE, RA FFA ELLA , The H appy Farm er: A Student Com position from Rom an Egypt , G reek, Rom an and Byzantine Studies, 33:3 (1992:Fall) p.247 , Inscribed Wooden Tablet, Staatsbibliothek PreuGischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Ms. graec. quo 36 (photo museum, reduced to 77%) I =~,~ () ~ tp ...... o :;0 tTl "'0 r ~ tT:1 ...... CRIBIORE, RAFFAELLA, The Happy Farmer: A Student Composition from Roman Egypt , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:3 (1992:Fall) p.247 RAFF AELLA CRIBIORE 253 better meaning. The adjective was used occasionally as a noun (e.g. Eur. fr. 29 Nauck). The adjective appears with the meaning 'independent' at Men. Dysk. 714. The last word of the line, after t, is extremely faded. Although Wilcken read ~hv6j.l£vo~, apparently without hesitation in either edition, I have preferred alpha, as equally possible. We know from the documentary papyri that thematic forms of (5UVCqlCH were used frequently side by side with the athematic forms (B. G. Mandilaras, The Verb in the Greek Non-Literary Papyri [Athens 1973] 74ff, esp. section 102). 9 At the beginning of the line (which he could not read) Wilcken supplied [oucS£j.lfuv] and at the end xup[av]. The farmer has no joy in farming. The word t 'n~ OtE'tat 'tEP1tVO'tEPOV dvat 'tOY fV acr'tEt ~[OV, fvElUf.l­ T\El,,'t(}) 1tpO~ eamov, oiov f.lev fcrnv af.l1tEAOV op&v Kat ~o'tpu~ KpEf.laf.leVOu~, oiov 8E U1tO 1tl'tut Kat 1tAa'tUvcr f.lEcrT\f.l~p[as KEtcrElat, oiov 8E i,8Elv A"ta ~Epaya8iat are extolled by a student who was perhaps more influenced by literary precedent than the world around him. It is conceivable, if by no means certain, that the composition was among the first poetical exercises attempted by this student, probably when he was still under the tutelage of a ypall­ lla'ttK6~.23 Wilcken noted that the text aspired to be a poetic composition, but he did not expand on the subject. Certainly 21 262.4 Foerster; cf the first line of the present exercise. 22 "If anyone believes that life in the city is more pleasant, let him ponder within himself what a thing it is to see the vine with hanging grapes, to recline beneath a pine and a plane tree at noon, to watch the cornfields stirred by the zephyr's breezes, to hear oxen bellow and sheep bleat-and what a sight are the heifers springing around and sucking milk." 23 The level is certainly not high. Elementary compositions were normally done in the grammarian's schoolroom (Quint. Inst. 1.9). Although compositions were in theory the province of the rhetor, some of the prepara­ tory exercises were often handed down to the grammarian. For the en­ croachment of one level of education upon the other see H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (Madison 1956) 160f, 172-75. For a discussion of the indirect evidence of grammarians teaching verse-writing see D. L. Clark, Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education (Westport 1957) 176-79. CRIBIORE, RAFFAELLA, The Happy Farmer: A Student Composition from Roman Egypt , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:3 (1992:Fall) p.247 258 A STUDENT COMPOSITION FROM ROMAN EGYPT there seems to be no attempt at meter beyond a vague iambic rhythm. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, "No passage which is composed absolutely without meter can be invested with the melody of poetry or lyric grace, at any rate from the point of view of the word-arrangement considered in itself. No doubt the choice of words goes a long way, and there is a poetical vocabulary consisting of rare, foreign, figurative and coined words in which poetry takes delight."24 We can say positively that this student makes an effort in that direction. Such words as KUJla't0s. which is used repeatedly, yata, YAUK£POS, ()aJlu~O). 't£P1tOJl£VOs, and the forms a'tlxoHH, Jl£U, ~oa are exclusively poetic. We may regard the composition as something of a Homeric pastiche. The self-contained lines also speak in favor of poetry. Perhaps the exercise was the first draft of a poetic composition, in which the student set up the vocabulary, sketched the cola, but had not yet worked on the metra. We know little of such practices occurring in the process of composition,25 but in a well known passage of his Vergilii vita Donatus reports that Vergil initially wrote out the Aeneid in prose and only later set various sections in verse. 26 An alternative hypothesis 27would interpret our ten lines not as a composition, but as a much-corrupted passage of poetry, per­ haps a speech from New Comedy, written from memory. The student was able to recover some of the poetic diction, but only hints of the original meter were left. As we noted earlier,28 Comedy usually presented the type of hard-working farmer who had no rest from toil. Occasionally, however, a 'happier' country life is extolled. We might also suppose that, if the lines were New Comedy, the whole effect of presenting a happy farmer might be intentionally ironic: the farmer recounts 'ad­ vantages' that the listener will hardly recognize as such. 24 Tr. W. R. Roberts, Dionysius of HaLicarnassus, On Literary Composition (London 1910) 253. 25 The exercise of prose paraphrase of poetry represents the same process in reverse. 26 Aeneida prosa prius oratione formatam digestamque in Xli Libras panicu­ tatim componere instituit (A. Rostagni, Suetonio De Poetis e Biografi Minori [Torino 1956J 87). 27 P. J. Parsons per litteras 19 April 1992. 28 Cf supra 255 on Menander's two plays with rustic subjects. Frr. sssf seem particularly close to the general tone of our text. Consider also aU1:0upY(lS and (1)'t(xpKT\C;. which also appear in Menander. CRIBIORE, RAFFAELLA, The Happy Farmer: A Student Composition from Roman Egypt , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:3 (1992:Fall) p.247 RAFF AELLA CRIBIORE 259 But this attractive hypothesis seems unlikely. Although the content of the text recalls comic motifs, the diction is generally closer to Homer than to New Comedy. We would have to imagine that the student began with one or more lines of Comedy, possibly even a whole passage, and then reworked the whole to make it his own. II Roughly-drawn crosses conclude each line of the text. Pre­ vious editors have reproduced them without explanation, although one may suspect that Parthey's enthusiasm for St George depended on the interpretation of them as real crosses, and that they were also so regarded by Leclercq, who speaks of a Christian schoolboy. Marks at the end of each verse occur sometimes in poetic texts written continuously like prose. An examination of the various methods of writing verses common in school exercises may offer some explanation of the signs used in this tablet. Although professional copyists from the middle of the third century B.C. generally write verse with line-breaks, poetic texts sometimes appear without them. The latter treatment was reserved especially for lyric poetry and choral portions of tragedy and comedy, which had a complex metrical structure. Less commonly, hexameters and iambics were written without separating one line from the next. 29 The practice of inscribing poetry in continuous lines, regardless of verse-units, is common in school exercises. A fair number of examples from the Ptolemaic period are written in 29 See Turner (supra n.2) 12 with n.57. Some of the texts cited here as oc­ casional instances of the survival in the Roman period of the practice of writing verses in continuous lines were considered by their editors possible school exercises (eg. P.Haun. 4, P.Oxy. VI 864, P.Turner 5). They are not writ­ ten in unpracticed hands but they could be a product of rhetorical schools. In addition to the texts cited by Turner, there are a few other examples of this practice: P. Lond. Lit. 51 (second century) appears to contain an anapestic composition on the Sun's grief for the death of Phaethon. The first four verses are transcribed according to colometry; the rest are written in continuous lines, with the breaks often marked by oblique dashes. P. Lond. Lit. 53 (third century) contains iambics (Semonides of Amorgos?) written continuously, with the verses marked by two oblique strokes. M PER N.S. I 2b (inv. 19794) and III 1 (inv. 19791, first or second century) contain fragments of a roll of I/iad 10, where the hexameters were probably written continuously. The only two line-ends preserved show oblique dashes. CRIBIORE, RAFFAELLA, The Happy Farmer: A Student Composition from Roman Egypt , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:3 (1992:Fall) p.247 260 A STUDENT COMPOSITION FROM ROMAN EGYPT this way.30 Generally there is no distinction between Homeric hexameters, iambic, and lyric verse. The practice of writing verse as prose is occasionally found in schools in the Roman and early Byzantine periods until the fourth and fifth centuries. 31 Here too the lines are simply writ­ ten one after the other, as in the previous period. 32 Many exercises, however, display division marks between individual verses. 33 These consist generally of single or double oblique or horizontal strokes similar to the marks that sometimes divide clauses in literary texts. 34 In T. Varie 24-25, however, the oblique dashes are sometimes accompanied by two dots, producing a mark C/·) resembling a percentage sign. A few of these exercises are in hexameters or lyric meters, but the great majority are iambics. One can only speculate about the reason for writing verses as prose in the routine of the schools, given the possibility of bilingual interference, orthographic problems, and difficulties caused by disregarding word-division (scriptio continua). Even when marks dividing lines do appear they are not always accurate. For some students the practice was a burden, as one can infer from the faltering performance of the pupil who wrote the exercise of P.Ross. Georg. I 12. The model of the master, which occupies the first five lines of the tablet, consists of two maxims in iambic trimeters, separated by two short oblique lines. The student, who copies the lines of his master three times, is apparently unable to distinguish the appropriate metrical break, and after several mistaken attempts he finally gives up altogether and proceeds without separation. 30 See e.g. P.MiL II 15, P.Freib. lIb, P.Koln III 125, and O.Bod!. II 2172. 31 The most recent of the very few texts cited for this practice by Turner (supra n.2: 12) belongs to the third century. 32 See e.g. P.Oxy. 111425, P.Yale II 135, O.Wadie Hanna (H. Henne, BIFAO 27 [1927J 79-82), and Bodi. Gk. Inscr. 2941+2942 a. G. Milne, JHS 28 [1908J 126 no. VIII, 130-31 no. XV). 33 See e.g. P.Ross.Georg. I 12, 13; P.Flor. XVIII 23-32; P.Leid.Inst. 16; Louvre MND 552 E-F (B. Boyaval, ZPE 17 [1975J 145-50). H See Turner (supra n.2) 144, commentary on pI. 86. The sign seems to occur especially in dramatic and biblical texts, and may have facilitated dramatic delivery and reading aloud. See also P.Oxy. LV 3812 (a private letter with an oblique stroke used for strong punctuation); M. Manfredi, «Alcune con­ siderazioni su PSI I 65," Miscellanea Roca Puig (Barcelona 1987) 185. The text in question is a prayer, with several oblique strokes that mark the pauses in the recitation. CRIBIORE, RAFFAELLA, The Happy Farmer: A Student Composition from Roman Egypt , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:3 (1992:Fall) p.247 RAFFAELLA CRIBIORE 261 The principal reason for wri ting poetry in con tinuous lines may have been a practical one. The length of the line was dic­ tated by the shape of the sherd or by the width of the papyrus scrap a student had been able to put his hands on. When writing on a tablet, one still had to deal with the limits of the writing surface (most tablets were smaller than the tablet considered here).35 Thus it seems that writing verses as prose, with or without division marks, created fewer practical problems for the student.36 On the other hand, poetic exercises written as prose on materials that offered no apparent limitation of space seem to consist either of texts with complex metrical patterns or of short anthologies intended for memorization or of drills to acquire special proficiency in writing. When the verse-unit corresponded to the written line, there was no need of dividing marks. Besides the composition we are considering, with its crosses drawn at the end of each line, several other exercises with line-by-line separation of verses show curious signs by the right margin at the conclusion of each verse. 37 In P.Oxy. LIII 3712 oblique strokes appear at the conclusion of two lines, and the editor suggests that each line was so terminated. In MPER N.S. III 24 and 25, each line of verse terminates with the sign 'j .. This mark sometimes appears in literary texts 38 at the left margin or, more rarely, in the body of the text. Not all the meanings of this sign are clear, but it was apparently not meant to indicate a separation or pause.39 In 35 Besides, the letters of a model and of a 'school hand' were larger than normal, sometimes reaching a line height of 1.5 cm. 36 It is easy to see the difficulties encountered by the student of T. Varie 24-25, who started inscribing the verses one per line. Since the length of the verse and the space he had at his disposal did not coincide exactly, he used several tricks to fit a verse that was too long or employed fillers, where some space remained. After line 12, however, he gave up and wrote the verses continuously. 37 Cf., in a Latin text, the poem De bello Actiaco, where each verse is marked by a sign of distinctio that resembles a wedged line-filler but occurs at the conclusion of each line: R. Seider, PaLaographie der lateinischen Papyri 11.1 (Stuttgart 1978) 35f nr. 4. 38 See Turner (supra n.2) 14 with n.75. 39 P. J. Parsons (per litteras, 20 May 1991) notes the oddity of the use of the sign here, with the apparent meaning of separation or pause, given that oblique strokes were available for that. CRIBIORE, RAFFAELLA, The Happy Farmer: A Student Composition from Roman Egypt , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:3 (1992:Fall) p.247 262 A STUDENT COMPOSITION FROM ROMAN EGYPT exercises, however, the .j. seems to have had precisely this use.40 It is still unclear just why signs were used to mark verse-ends even when the text was written as verse. M. W. Haslam, the editor of P.Oxy. LIII 3712, noticed in this text a misdivision between lines 56 and 57 and suggested that "perhaps the object of the exercise was articulation of the text into its constituent verses, whether from dictation or from a text written out as prose." The proposal is attractive, though such a practice is not attested in the schools. It is also possible that the practice of marking regularly verse-ends was related to avayvffipt